


Odd One Out

by squanderbird



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Prison, angstfest!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squanderbird/pseuds/squanderbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has learnt the delineation of this cell.  </p><p>Alex Summers in a high-security facility before recruitment, waiting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odd One Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [etiam_quietus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etiam_quietus/gifts).



He has learnt the delineation of this cell, so much so the cold outlines linger, haunting the inners of his eyelids. This place is notable for its lack of escape, no exit conceptualised, stamped with facelessly organised regret. We are very sorry for our actions, but you are a danger to society; the bolts chink into locks with alarming computerised efficiency, ultimate summoning. High-security abandonment; food squished thinly through a slat, blue refrigerator walls about him, and a silence that stretches on and on and on and -

He watches daylight flick past, wavering glances of light refracting uncertainly into his containment. Outside marching footsteps are his markers. Time revolves around him and he is still, suspended, unchanged. His mind is havoc; bitter irony, taste of warm nails when he bites his tongue against it. He stuffs down bland vitamins for a helpless distraction, chews, hands sticky bare against canvas jumpsuit, fingernails clogging with grime, pores weeping. He feels feral. He feels dangerous. 

He feels - human still, and that - that frightens him, pestering him through the quietness and inertia. Even in black sea-wash of sleep, the thought peeks up, peers out. Out of caged-up boredom, he scratches persistent at the webby gap between fingers until the cells, the plasma, well up in a dark clotted stain. He still bleeds. He still breathes. He is more than a walking experiment, a harmlessly groovy mutation intricately dreamt up by a slip on evolution's part. 

He has a name. He has no one. Plane-crash survivor, dutiful adoptive son gone renegade, teenage boy with an unfortunate pseudo-supehero habit of harnessing energy, accidentally spewing out slicing boiling heat like the chopped-up meaty chunks of a sun's heart. Barely used to shaving, the flick of razor taut against frothy cheeks, and jailed for lifespan - or longer, maybe, the inmate once called Alex Summers isn't sure any more. How long do mutants remain breathing? 

Loneliness comes to sit by his side; he tries to talk to her, but she sneers through wincing eyes, turns away from him. He could chase her, but he's forgotten how to try. He is a bundle of flesh squatting, exhuming carbon dioxide and sweat and occasionally the dry salt of half-earnest sobs. He is taking up space and waiting for the end, searching for answers in the shuttering chinks of fading sunlight. It's getting colder; he is given two sparsely-haired blankets, a festive bonus, he supposes. Time slips past in puffs of tired breath, round circular shadows tracing eyelids, burn-holes for eyes. 

He waits, and occasionally hopes, tracing the damage he wrought in righteous destruction, first fortnight, wearing himself out against reinforced steel always closing in, closing in -

It is an external pulse, painful beautiful brainwave - he flinches, curls into himself, face hot against canvas-sealed knees - diamond synapse connection - voices, and faces, a blissful second of group consciousness -

_Alex Summers. He's in a security facility. Three days by car, faster if I drive._

Photograph montage of a life story skewered on the cutting room floor by gentle, clinical probing - they know his name, they're like him, they're ugly gorgeous freaks too, it's not just him, it's never been only him -

_Alex, can you hear me? You're not alone, Alex. You are not alone, do you hear me? You will not die in that place they've kept you in, my friend. We're coming for you._

Beyond the barriers of a multiple-digit-reference cell, the on-duty guard hears a sound. It leaves him white-faced, fumbling for back-up, unnerved on a basic, instinctive level -

Inmate 45689, Alexander Summers, teenage mutant - the sound is raw, sore and happy and aching with hysteria - Alex Summers is laughing, loud enough to raise dead men, loud enough to try. He can't stop, it peals out of him like a warning.

_Don't worry, Alex. We're coming for you._


End file.
